WOW, that looks awesome! I'm actually in the middle of doing one myself. I got On Q, probably should have got leviton. Could you give me the list of stuff you have in there? Also, where did you get the velcro straps?

WOW, that looks awesome! I'm actually in the middle of doing one myself. I got On Q, probably should have got leviton. Could you give me the list of stuff you have in there? Also, where did you get the velcro straps?

WOW, that looks awesome! I'm actually in the middle of doing one myself. I got On Q, probably should have got leviton. Could you give me the list of stuff you have in there? Also, where did you get the velcro straps?

In my personal opinion, OnQ is not the best one to use, since you very quickly run out of space. As for these cabinets, most people like myself, find out that you are not only limited to them, but you very quickly outgrow them.

I use a 3 foot a/v rack with two shelves and a patch panel to keep all of my equipment on, and still have room to add more if needed.

In my personal opinion, OnQ is not the best one to use, since you very quickly run out of space. As for these cabinets, most people like myself, find out that you are not only limited to them, but you very quickly outgrow them.

OnQ is just the brand. They have enclosures in different sizes such as 14", 20", 28" and 42" heights.

WOW, that looks awesome! I'm actually in the middle of doing one myself. I got On Q, probably should have got leviton. Could you give me the list of stuff you have in there? Also, where did you get the velcro straps?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juice916

oh, another question. Did you ground the enclosure, if you did how did you do it?

Thanks again for that... (post pics of what your are doing)

The Panel is actually Grounded since the receptacle is grounded and is screwed to the panel at bare metal (Leviton removes the paint around the screw terminals).
As you can see the green grounding screw is on the bottom if any component in the Panel needs to be grounded.

I used:

Verizon FiOS Ethernet/MoCA networking WiFi Router

Older Linksys/Cisco 8-Port GIGA Switch. (Soon to swap out w/ a new model from either Linksys/DLink/Netgear)

In my personal opinion, OnQ is not the best one to use, since you very quickly run out of space. As for these cabinets, most people like myself, find out that you are not only limited to them, but you very quickly outgrow them.

I use a 3 foot a/v rack with two shelves and a patch panel to keep all of my equipment on, and still have room to add more if needed.

I totally understand the use of a rack...which if I had the space, the need and wanted to spend the $$, I def. would have gone that route.

I always love seeing wiring & equipment (it's a sickness), could you post some pics of your setup?

Really no differen than what the OP started with. It actually sits under the landing going into our basement, and works out real well for what I am doing with it.

There will soon be a server on the bottom shelf for media and content storage. My other server died a couple of years ago, so everything has been kept on a workstation that has a 500gb hard drive, but that is running out of space, so going back to the other way that I had stuff stored on the network.

What I plan to do is, put my cable modem, directv on demand device, wireless router. I also have some ethernet that I found in the wall which I didnt know about. I would like to use for internet throughout the house. I'm stuck with how to distribute ethernet.

What I plan to do is, put my cable modem, directv on demand device, wireless router. I also have some ethernet that I found in the wall which I didnt know about. I would like to use for internet throughout the house. I'm stuck with how to distribute ethernet.

Juice916, You can turn off DHCP on that wifi router, and use it as a AP. If it is capable of having Tomato or DDWRT loaded on it, you get a more robust device. There are also access points that use POE (Power Over Ethernet), so that you do not have to use a power plug, power gets delivered over the spare ethernet pairs. Just have to run Cat-5e or Cat-6 to the location.

What are those on both sides of the panel. Just curious.
how did you mount your two devices?
Where did you get that triangular power thing from? thought that was cool.
I thought about adding another receptacle but i'm trying to see if I would need it.

Thanks mrkalel and everyone who has replied. Sorry mrkalel if I took over your post.

What are those on both sides of the panel. Just curious.
how did you mount your two devices?
Where did you get that triangular power thing from? thought that was cool.
I thought about adding another receptacle but i'm trying to see if I would need it.

Thanks mrkalel and everyone who has replied. Sorry mrkalel if I took over your post.

Looking good so far...(of course just clean up the wiring later)

Those what things on the side? Do you mean the 2 6 Ports? Read earlier reply...

I would never mount a router inside the box. You're going to cook it. Heat is the enemy of electronic devices. I've got one of those routers (on 3rd one now, due to power brick failures) and then tend to run a bit hot. That and look at the case, the manufacturer didn't go for a more expensive tooling to mold that heavily vented case just for "looks". They did it to help dissipate heat. Get the router out of the box and out in open air.

As for those boxes, meh, I prefer racks and patch panels. Things change over time and those boxes always end up not having enough space. Especially not when it comes to maintaining proper bend radius angles for coax. The only point I may use some in our new remodel is for an on-level distribution point upstairs. I like the idea of having a box upstairs with conduits running out to each room from there. Even with straight runs of wire back to the main rack. A box would give me a point to handle any additions or changes with less trouble than going all the way back to the main rack.

At the very least I'd get a box with vents at the top and bottom of the cover/door. Or have a local metal or custom auto body shop put louvers into it. Give the box a way to allow convection to circulate the air in there.

As for racks under steps or in basements, be SURE you're not exposing the gear to excessive humidity or heat. Heat's bad, for sure, but so is corrosion from moisture, or short circuits due to mold growth. I made the mistake of having a router setup that way in an old house a long time ago. Didn't take more than about 6 months for it to start failing. Any open connectors developed corrosion, and the inside of the box had a nasty white powdery growth on everything. Don't know what it was but didn't care to look much closer. Scratch one router and a lesson learned.

Unless you've got stuff that's specifically designed for harsh conditions you're better off putting it in places that have the same level of comfort as the rest of your home.

I would never mount a router inside the box. You're going to cook it. Heat is the enemy of electronic devices. I've got one of those routers (on 3rd one now, due to power brick failures) and then tend to run a bit hot. That and look at the case, the manufacturer didn't go for a more expensive tooling to mold that heavily vented case just for "looks". They did it to help dissipate heat. Get the router out of the box and out in open air.

It is done all of the time, and rest assured, there is enough airflow in there for them, and no they will not cook.

I would never mount a router inside the box. You're going to cook it. Heat is the enemy of electronic devices. I've got one of those routers (on 3rd one now, due to power brick failures) and then tend to run a bit hot. That and look at the case, the manufacturer didn't go for a more expensive tooling to mold that heavily vented case just for "looks". They did it to help dissipate heat. Get the router out of the box and out in open air.

As for those boxes, meh, I prefer racks and patch panels. Things change over time and those boxes always end up not having enough space. Especially not when it comes to maintaining proper bend radius angles for coax. The only point I may use some in our new remodel is for an on-level distribution point upstairs. I like the idea of having a box upstairs with conduits running out to each room from there. Even with straight runs of wire back to the main rack. A box would give me a point to handle any additions or changes with less trouble than going all the way back to the main rack.

At the very least I'd get a box with vents at the top and bottom of the cover/door. Or have a local metal or custom auto body shop put louvers into it. Give the box a way to allow convection to circulate the air in there.

As for racks under steps or in basements, be SURE you're not exposing the gear to excessive humidity or heat. Heat's bad, for sure, but so is corrosion from moisture, or short circuits due to mold growth. I made the mistake of having a router setup that way in an old house a long time ago. Didn't take more than about 6 months for it to start failing. Any open connectors developed corrosion, and the inside of the box had a nasty white powdery growth on everything. Don't know what it was but didn't care to look much closer. Scratch one router and a lesson learned.

Unless you've got stuff that's specifically designed for harsh conditions you're better off putting it in places that have the same level of comfort as the rest of your home.

These are all great points, and everyone should pay attention to them. That being said...

A few things w/my setup:

These are all the same components running for years in my finished basement, with no humidity issues...

The router is designed to be mounted in that orientation & I actually removed two extra wire pop-outs on the top of the Panel to allow extra venting. Also the wall on the other side is opened up to allow even more venting. (I monitored the SMC for a few days & it only gets to about 85deg right around the top & ~80deg @router.

As for the Bend radius for the COAX's: I ran it straight w/ a bend radius into the box over 1.5'....so no issues there. (Plus all runs were tested after for MoCA & Video.

Again with the issue of racks vs panels... I LOVE the look of beautiful rack done w/ great wiring etc...but I debated if I really needed to spend the $ and deep down I knew that this would be perfect for me...

I see no reason to need to do additional runs of CAT cables since what I have run is all CAT6 rated for 550Mhz. I already have runs perfectly positioned where I need them (and can throw switches if the time comes)...so don't really see this running out of space for me...(for this application)

One of my fav things of my network is the MoCA networking. In an extra room that I turned into a mini-office w/ no ethernet, I added another FiOS N router w/ DHCP turned off and now have a 4 port ethernet switch AND a WiFi AP that gives me my full internet speeds of 155Mb/65Mb

I just pulled some parts out of my box to re-arrange some gear - note that this stuff REALLY works! I just cut off 3-4" and stuck it to the back of the modem/router/switch and stuck it to the back of the box. Turns out that's way overkill. A couple 1" wide strips would be more than enough to hold the lightweight components. The single big pad's worth I used made it difficult to remove the device - I thought I was going to rip it apart!

mrkalel, your setup looks well done. But to be honest, I would of just left your original setup alone. Now this is just me, but I prefer shelves. No special mounting involved and things are a lot easier to change. Things may get crowded in there on down the road.

The biggest downside to stuff just sitting on open shelves is cleanup. When you've got things hard-mounted in a box they're going to stay that way. On a shelf they're going to see dust accumulating on them. And when you attempt to clean them you run the risk of disrupting the wiring and other connections. At least when bolted into a rack, even an open one, all the connections can be secured to avoid things getting accidentally disrupted.

I was rather displeased to discover the dust that'd settled on some of the gear when I de-racked it before demolishing the old house. The dust still had the smell of a carpet deodorizer powder we'd used some 6 years before...

Not sure how I'll overcome that with the new rack setup as it'll still be open. But at least I'll make sure to secure all the wiring neatly enough to allow cleaning at least more often than 6 years apart...